Balancing carrots and sticks in REDD+: implications for social safeguards

Amy E Duchelle,Claudio De Sassi,Christy Desta Pratama,Marina Cromberg,William D Sunderlin,Anne M Larson,Pamela Jagger,Ida Aju Pradnja Resosudarmo,Stibniati S Atmadja

doi:10.5751/es-09334-220302

Abstract

Reducing carbon emissions through avoided deforestation and forest degradation and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+) is key to mitigating global climate change. The aim of REDD+ social safeguards is to ensure that REDD+ does not harm, and actually benefits, local people. To be eligible for results-based compensation through REDD+, countries should develop national-level safeguard information systems to monitor and report on the impacts of REDD+. Although safeguards represent a key step for promoting social responsibility in REDD+, they are challenging to operationalize and monitor. We analyzed the impacts of different types of REDD+ interventions (incentives vs. disincentives) on key safeguard-relevant indicators, i.e., tenure security, participation, and subjective well-being, as well as on reported forest clearing. We used household-level data collected in Brazil, Peru, Cameroon, Tanzania, Indonesia, and Vietnam from approximately 4000 households in 130 villages at two points in time (2010-2012 and 2013-2014). Our findings highlight a decrease in perceived tenure security and overall perceived well-being over time for households exposed to disincentives alone, with the addition of incentives helping to alleviate negative effects on well-being. In Brazil, although disincentives were associated with reduced reported forest clearing by smallholders, they were the intervention that most negatively affected perceived well-being, highlighting a clear trade-off between carbon and noncarbon benefits. Globally, although households exposed to REDD+ interventions were generally aware of local REDD+ initiatives, meaningful participation in initiative design and implementation lagged behind. Our analysis contributes to a relatively small literature that seeks to operationalize REDD+ social safeguards empirically and to evaluate the impacts of REDD+ interventions on local people and forests.

Highlights

With the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the world agreed that mitigating the negative effects of climate change must include tropical forests
Between 23 and 43% of targeted households in Peru, Brazil, Tanzania, and Cameroon received an intervention mix consisting of both disincentives and incentives
Our analysis focused on the effect of different types of interventions on tenure security, local awareness of and participation in REDD+, and subjective well-being, which are all key elements of REDD+ social safeguards

Summary

Introduction

With the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the world agreed that mitigating the negative effects of climate change must include tropical forests. Many tropical countries refer to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing carbon stocks (REDD+) in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) toward keeping global temperature rise below 2.0/1.5 °C. As part of the results-based financing aspect of REDD+, countries have put into place rigorous measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems for assessing forest losses and gains relative to baseline or reference scenarios. There is growing attention to establishing systems for monitoring the social impacts of REDD+. This new attention to social impacts is in sharp contrast to evaluations of early forest carbon projects, such as those implemented through the clean development mechanism, which gave very limited attention to whether projects were benefiting or harming local people (Caplow et al 2011)

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